The party didn't slow down. If anything, it settled.
Like the room had already decided what it was, and everyone inside had agreed to play along.
After Lucien's arrival, no one pretended anymore. Not as a matter of can't, but couldn't. With how sharp their senses were, pretending wasn't really an option.
This wasn't just a gathering. Not with the way conversations sharpened. Not with the way people started watching more than speaking.
Theodore felt it the moment he drifted a few steps away from Charlotte to stand beside the other heirs.
People didn't avoid him nor show their disgust outwardly for his lowly blood mix with a Bareblood. More so, they acknowledged him and then let him pass.
And somehow, that felt worse.
"Try not to look like you're about to bolt," Aurora muttered beside him, jokingly, as she swirled the wine she grabbed from a passing tray.
"I'm not—" Theodore mumbles from the line beside the others.
Meanwhile, Emilia looks at the witches present.
She recognized a few of them. After all, they were the ones who cuffed and persecuted her after what she did.
She wasn't impressed.
She was studying, both the supernaturals and the witches present.
Towards Theodore, as he stood in front of Lucien and the elders, he felt even more out of place.
They didn't have to look for long. One of them approached on his own.
A man—young, maybe. Or at least he looked at it.
Same age range as Theodore, if you ignored the way he carried himself. Like he'd lived long enough to get bored with pretending otherwise.
"D'Arcel," he greeted, like that alone was enough introduction.
Theodore hesitated for a second.
"…Yeah."
The man's gaze dropped slightly, towards Theodore's hand. To the faint trace of blood that hadn't fully faded from Lilith's feeding.
"Your Birthright is Hemomancy, then."
Theodore looked at the man with confusion on his face.
"…Yeah." The man nodded once. "Figures."
A small pause.
"With a Bareblood in your lineage… makes sense you'd inherit your father's."
Theodore didn't answer right away. Not because he didn't hear it but because it landed wrong.
Like it wasn't just an observation but a conclusion someone had already filed away.
The man finally looked at him properly.
Not at his face.
At him.
Like Theodore was something of an anomaly, not someone to be spoken to with normal means.
"…Though," he says as he fixes his gaze towards Charlotte and her disciples. "I guess that explains the improvement. Being with the heretics and all."
Aurora's brows twitched.
"Excuse me?"
The man scoffs as he sips at he's blood wine.
"Relax," he said lightly. "That wasn't meant as an insult."
"It sounded like one," Aurora muttered.
"It usually does," he replied.
A faint pause.
Then his eyes returned to Theodore.
"You're the one they've been watching. Lucky you"
Theodore's jaw tightened slightly.
"…I didn't ask to be."
A soft exhale, almost amused.
"No one does."
That answer didn't help either. It made it worse in a different way. Because that sounded normal to him. Like that was just how things were.
The man tilted his head slightly. "You're stronger than I expected. Those spies I sent were telling the truth," he added. "For someone still… being shaped."
That word stuck. Not the 'spies' but the other one.
Shaped.
He knew there were others watching him at the Lunarium.
He felt them.
Well more like, seeing them with how obvious they were.
Like, Theodore wasn't finished yet. Like he was still being formed around something he didn't control.
Before Theodore could respond, Charlotte finally spoke.
"You're talking like he's an object."
The man—one of Lucien's nephews, one of the D'Arcel heirs watching the succession from just beneath the throne line—glanced at her without interest.
"Everything here is an object," he said flatly. "Including you, if you stand in the wrong place long enough, heretic."
A pause.
"Besides," he added, eyes drifting briefly toward Theodore, "uncle Lucien was stupid to send him to a witch's coven to study under."
His gaze returned forward.
"Applying witchcraft thinking to Birthright is pointless."
A faint exhale.
"Absurd, even."
Aurora clicked her tongue.
"What a disgusting thought."
The man didn't react immediately.
No offense. No irritation. Just a slow pause, like she had said something offending.
"Impure," he corrected.
His tone was flat.
Certain.
Not argumentative nor judgmental, like the word itself settled the matter.
Then he looked at her properly.
Just once.
"You outsiders always misunderstand the problem."
A beat.
"Witchcraft is built. Birthrights are inherited."
His gaze shifted slightly—briefly catching Theodore in his periphery.
"They are not meant to be touched and meddled by these… witches."
A faint exhale, almost dismissive.
"Mixing them is how things rot. Just like your entire system."
Not a warning but a conclusion.
Then, as if the subject had already lost all relevance to him, he turned slightly toward the hall.
"You'll understand when the ceremony starts."
Theodore frowned.
"…Understand what?"
But the man was already walking off. Not hurried, not dismissive, just that quiet finality of someone who had already decided everything worth saying had been said. Like the conversation itself had already been judged unnecessary.
Aurora watched him go with clear irritation.
"I hate him."
"Same," Theodore muttered. But his attention didn't leave the direction he walked. Because the worst part wasn't what he said. It was how unbothered he was saying it.
Emilia kept her gaze where the man had disappeared into the crowd, like she was still thinking through what he actually meant rather than how he said it.
"…That wasn't personal," she said quietly.
Aurora frowned slightly.
"It kind of felt personal, you know."
Emilia shook her head.
"But it wasn't aimed at Theodore specifically," she said. "It was aimed at the idea of him."
That made Theodore glance at her.
"…The idea of me?"
Emilia nodded once.
"Yeah," she said. "I mean you're the reason other supernaturals enrolled at the Lunarium."
Aurora let out a short breath.
"That's still insane."
"He's one of those pure blooded ones. He's proud of their blood," Emilia corrected.
Charlotte finally spoke, ice calm like she was stating something she'd known for a long time.
"He wasn't judging Theodore," she said. "He was rejecting the influence around him as Emilia stated."
Theodore frowned slightly.
"…The witch learning thing?"
Charlotte gave a small nod.
"Anything that interferes with Birthright is seen as dilution."
She took a sip before continuing, tone still casual.
"Look at you. Your Hemomancy's already drifting. It's not just what it's supposed to be anymore."
A brief pause.
"Mixing frameworks changes how it manifests. That's enough for them to label it unstable."
Aurora crossed her arms.
"So he just hates witches?"
Charlotte let out a small laugh, more amused than dismissive.
"It's not that simple," she said. "People like him don't think in terms of hate. They think in terms of purity."
A beat.
"Witchcraft is learned. Birthright is inherited. To them, those two things aren't supposed to exist in the same person without something going wrong."
Her gaze flicked briefly toward Theodore, like she was using him as an example without making it feel cruel.
"But look at Theo," she added lightly. "He's still standing. Still functional. Barely changed at all."
A small shrug.
"If anything, they're just like the old witches," she said. "Afraid of anything that doesn't stay in its original shape. Honestly, I hate it. It helps them too."
That made Theodore go quiet. Not because it was complicated, but because it didn't sound like something anyone here was still questioning. With the few families enrolling their families to learn under the Lunarium, they just accepted it but under that guise, they still despised it.
The hall continued around them like nothing had shifted. But Theodore didn't miss it anymore. Not the words. Not the looks. Not the fact that, to them, he wasn't being evaluated as a person, just as something that didn't quite belong to a single category cleanly enough.
From deeper in the hall, laughter broke out again.
Different group this time.
Still vampires. Still relaxed. Still talking like none of this weighed anything at all.
One of them leaned slightly toward another.
"So the Bareblood rumor is true then?"
Another chuckled.
"Seems like it. Always interesting when that kid gets mentioned."
"I still don't understand why Lucien placed him under a witch's guidance at all. He should've been stripped from succession outright."
Theodore's fingers tightened slightly.
Aurora noticed immediately and acted like an older sister for him.
"…Don't listen to them."
"I'm not," he said.
But he was.
Emilia spoke again, quieter.
"…Bareblood influence usually destabilizes inheritance clarity."
Aurora blinked. "That sounds like a headache. What does that actually even mean?"
Charlotte glanced toward Theodore for a moment before answering.
"It means he doesn't fit the way they expect someone like him to fit."
A pause.
"And people notice that more than they should."
Theodore exhaled slowly through his nose.
"…I didn't choose any of that."
Charlotte's eyes stayed on him for a second.
"No one's saying you did."
But she didn't add anything else. Because that was the part that didn't matter here. What mattered was that it still changed how people looked at him anyway.
Across the hall, another shift passed through the crowd. Not loud. Not announced. Just attention moving upward.
The upper balcony.
More figures are now watching from above.
Different families.
Different lines.
All of them are present for the same reason.
Theodore felt it before he saw them. Eyes.
Not just on Lucien.
On everything underneath him.
Aurora followed his gaze upward.
"…That's a lot of people staring."
Emilia nodded slightly.
"If I have to assume, it might be the elders of the family."
"Elders?" Aurora repeated, frowning. "I thought they were all just, you know, Lucien's relatives."
Charlotte chuckles but her gaze stays on the hall.
"They are," she said. "Different branches. Those elders help with guiding the family descendants."
"Didn't expect these old guys would still be prominent in their politics," Aurora muttered.
Charlotte huffs in amusement, even Emilia couldn't help her little huffs.
That should've ended it. But it didn't feel like it did. Because none of the people around them looked like they belonged to the same idea of "family" at all. Just different versions of the same name standing in the same place for different reasons.
From somewhere above the hall, a voice drifted down. Too soft to make out clearly. But enough that the atmosphere shifted with it.
Theodore looked up.
The elders above were measuring the many heirs below.
Aurora shifted a little closer to him without noticing she did it.
"…Yeah, this just got worse," she muttered, looping an arm around Theodore's shoulders. "Ignore them, kid."
Theodore didn't answer.
From above, the elders had settled.
And this time—
They weren't just watching.
They were looking for something.
Theodore felt it again.
That pressure.
Not from the crowd, but from above.
He looked up and for the first time since entering the estate it didn't feel like a gathering anymore.
It felt like something had already begun.
The long awaited succession ceremony.